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Dwayne Johnson, also known as The Rock, has been named as the highest-earning actor of 2016.

The 44-year-old WWE wrestler turned global superstar topped the annual Forbes list of the world’s best-paid actors, earning a cool $64.5 million between June 2015 and June 2016.

The sum will include Johnson’s share of any box office revenue from earthquake-themed disaster movie San Andreas, which was released in May 2015, as well as the actor’s fee for recent action comedy Central Intelligence.

Johnson is also the actor who made the biggest gain in income this year after more than doubling his 2015 paycheck. Meanwhile, previous big-hitters Daniel Craig, Hugh Jackman and Channing Tatum were not listed after having quieter years.

Can you smell what The Rock is cooking? We reckon we can catch a whiff of lobsters and caviar. The former wrestler has had a spectacular year thanks to upfront fees for the aforementioned Central Intelligence (which clocked $208 million at the box office) and Baywatch, in which he'll play Mitch Buchanan.

He'll also have received a paycheck after signing up for the eighth film in the Fast and Furious franchise, which has made him seriously bankable, along with the $473 million box-office triumph of San Andreas – it's pleasing to know that expertly commanding a helicopter, truck, aeroplane and speedboat in just one film can pay so handsomely.

What does Jackie Chan do to stay so rich?

Big in Beijing: Jackie ChanCredit:
REX Features

The 62-year-old martial arts expert has come second in the list two years running, despite the fact 18 years have passed since the release of Rush Hour. How? Well, Chan's IMDB page has some clues. The actor has lent his voice or acting chops to 12 films since 2015, although some have only just been announced or are currently filming. While the likes of Dragon Blade didn't make a huge impact on the western box office, Chan continues to rake in the cash from China, where his films are approved by the country's draconian censors thanks to the good connections he has with Beijing.

Where does Johnny Depp's money come from?

Johnny Depp reprises his role as the Hatter in Alice Through the Looking GlassCredit:
AP

Depp, along with his recently divorced wife, Amber Heard, may be having an annus horribilis after the public breakdown of his marriage tarnished his already wobbly reputation – but he's still the fifth highest-earning actor in the world, making $48 million in 2016 (which makes the $7 million paid to Heard seem even smaller).

But how? Depp hasn't been tied to a major release since the dreaded Mortdecai in January 2015, and it's unlikely that his fee for February's TV movie Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal: The Movie, in which Depp played the presidential candidate, added much to those millions.

We can only imagine that Depp must have been given a considerable chunk of the $170 million budget given to fantasy flop Alice Through The Looking Glass upfront, as the Tim Burton-produced sequel took a (relatively) meagre $295 million at the box office. There's also the rumoured $116 million golden handshake involved to get Depp to don Jack Sparrow's dreadlocks for the fifth Pirates of the Carribbean film, out next year.

How much did Netflix pay Adam Sandler?

Ridiculous rich: Adam Sandler in Pixels

It's likely that the biggest contribution to Sandler's $30,000,000 paycheck was made by Netflix. The comedic actor's career may be ailing on the big screen (last summer's Pixels was universally panned by critics and cinemagoers alike). Last year, Forbes estimated that Sandler's last three films delivered just $3.40 for every dollar he was paid.

And yet Netflix (which Sandler signed a deal with because "it rhymes with 'wet chicks'") signed him up. It was reported that the streaming giant could afford Sandler's reported $80 million-per-film fee. The fact that Sander and Netflix's debut effort, The Ridiculous 6, was widely criticised for being racist didn't stop it from becoming the most popular film on the service in every country that it operates in. The Do-Over, released in May, scored even lower than Pixels on reviews aggregator Metacritic

Who are the Bollywood stars?

Amitabh Bachchan

Salman Kahn, Akshay Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Ruhk Khan earned a collective £177 million in 2016, but they aren't hugely well known to western audiences.

Salman Kahn is one of India's most prominent actors and producers who has undergone a career revival over the past half-decade after breaking out in Bollywood during the Nineties. His appearances in Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Sultan since 2015 have landed him in the Forbes list for the past two years.

Akshay Kumar is an Indian-born Canadian actor and Hindi cinema's leading light. Although he's the first Bollywood actor to net more than 300 million box office dollars across his career, he's made money from producing reality TV shows and owning a production studio.

The granddaddy of Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan has long been a legend in the Indian film industry but continues to appear in several films a year even into his seventies.

Finally, Shah Ruhk Khan. Known as The King of Bollywood, Khan has fingers in many pies and the cash to prove is. He has boosted his annual salary by more than a quarter in 2016 despite only appearing in one film, namely because of his other business ventures, including owning the Indian Premiere League cricket team.

Why aren't there more big-budget roles for women?

Another year, another demonstration of Hollywood's gender pay gap. Even when the pay is in the millions and the disparity is increasingly well-reported – including by the actresses themselves – the gap is wider at the top than the average between white men and women in the US.

There are many reasons why Jennifer Lawrence, 2016's highest-paid actress and a vocal advocate for gender parity, earned 72 per cent of what The Rock picked up last year, but one of them is that writers just aren't creating the same big-budget roles for women, and studios aren't paying actresses the same amount of money to fill them.